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Naja sumatrana
Today's encounter was the scariest/most adrenaline pumping I've ever had! We spotted this cobra crossing the road in an acacia/palm/eucalyptus plantation in Borneo. It was leaving a conservation area of plantation, and heading toward an area where a lot of people work outdoors in a tree nursery. My assistant is a reptile guy (though we study orangutans), and he was so happy to handle his first cobra! -No man or animal was injured :) He was able to get the snake back in the forest where he came from, because it probably would have been killed by one of the workers even if it wasn't a threat to anyone. Unfortunately in Indonesia, that's often the first response to seeing a snake.
East Kalimantan, Indonesia (island of Borneo) Coming out of an old acacia/palm/eucalyptus plantation, turned "conservation area"
-Not sure if it's a king cobra or not, seems too small. Was about 1 meter in length
Hi KaraNorby. Your spotting is featured in the new PN blog post via a link! Cheers
http://projectnoah.tumblr.com/post/58511...
Wow, what a spotting! Beautiful. Thanks for doing the right thing - bringing it out of harm's way. Admirable effort considering the danger of handling that cobra.
OK... after a few ID blunders, I think I got this one.... correct coloration, correct range, correct size.
We had similar cobras in the Philippines.... but ours were about 6ft long, irridescent blue-black, with a lemon-yellow belly. Gorgeous. (From a respectful distance......)
Thanks Argy Bee! And Megs, I handled the camera only, there was no way I was getting that close!! -I left that up to my assistant who was just overjoyed with our find. He's got the perfect mix of awesome and crazy
Hi Kara. Please correct your location for this spotting to Borneo. Thanks.